Hemlocks moderate temperatures, dropping them about 10 degrees in the canopy, and 5 to 10 degrees below on the forest floor. Feathery branches intercept rain or snow, reducing the moisture that actually reaches the ground that helps control flooding. These trees also purify the waters beneath them, allowing brook trout to thrive. If left alone hemlocks can live 800 years making them the longest – lived tree in the east.

About 5000 years ago hemlocks almost disappeared and then resurrected themselves to become a “Foundational Tree” (Harvard Forest hemlock research), helping to structure the rest of our eastern forests. Although fewer trees and plants thrive directly under hemlocks, the duff creates a very rich layer of humus (sometimes many feet deep) that stays moist even in drought and is capable of storing seeds hundreds, even thousands of years old, making them a veritable seed bank.

Unfortunately, change is the only constant, and warming temperatures and the introduction of the Asian woolly adelgid is sucking the life out of these magnificent trees. Harvard’s ecologists inform us that once infected, a tree will succumb in four to twelve years. Harvard’s hemlock forests are dying and to honor this passage they have created the Hemlock Hospice project, bringing in international artists to highlight what is happening to these foundational trees by creating sculptures in the hemlock forest.

Last spring when I was on the coast, I saw whole tracts totally stripped of what used to be hemlock forests. Harvard’s Hemlock project states that preemptive logging not only kills the trees, but destroys any chance of the trees’ ability to develop a natural defense that might eventually help the species to survive. The second cause of death is the woolly adelgid. According to sources like fish and game, the adelgid has spread as far west as Poland and Minot but is not yet here. I challenge this supposition because I have found the insects infesting hemlocks in heavily logged areas, although thankfully, I have yet to find evidence of it on my property or that of protected forests that I visit. That’s not to say that I think our trees will be spared in the long run, because I don’t.

It is easy to see this insect sucking the life out of needles simply by turning over a branch. Adelgids appear like fuzzy white clusters for most of the year. Another sign of a diseased hemlock is the loss of its crown or the raining down of dis-colored brown needles. This insect is impossible to eradicate although the use of pesticides and the introduction of would-be predators have been tried and failed (we make same mistakes over and over – never learning).

Although I have scant evidence to support this idea besides Simard’s work and studies made by Harvard ecologists that also suggest that cutting the trees preemptively doesn’t allow the hemlocks to develop natural defenses against insect invasion, my observations and senses tell me that forests that are left to care for themselves may slow the spread of the wooly adelgid because forests are one living organism that already has many natural defenses against invasions of all kinds. Most have not yet been either identified or studied, or if they have (like Suzanne Simard’s groundbreaking work), the results are simply dismissed.

Maine’s Forestry folks are operating out of a severely outdated paradigm. Why? Because economy trumps nature every time. We could make changes but we won’t because we want to keep logging our trees instead of saving the trees we have left while focusing on developing tree plantations to supply us with wood…

Because I am aware that the loss of this tree is going to alter the character of what’s left of our fragmented forests, I spend more time than ever before in hemlock peppered woodlands. In fact, it was my love for these trees and my need to be with them that first spoke to me of their antiquity in ways I cannot explain… And they did this before I ever did any research.

I also have a beautiful four foot piece of smooth hemlock wood that was dredged up from a local pond that stands perpendicular like the tree it once was in front of some healthy young hemlocks. I see it as a natural sculpture with an ‘eye’ that opens to the future. Because of the resinous heartwood that preserves the wood even under water, I find myself querying ‘what truths might the future hold for trees under siege’ every time I pass by this piece of wood.

The Harvard Hemlock research team has been studying the hemlock and other trees since the early 1900’s. These scientists state that ecology is rarely a consideration in land management decisions. If the objective is to ‘manage’ in harmony with natural processes, then the most efficient ecological approach to the slow dying of the hemlock is to do nothing.

They go on to say that cutting or girdling, salvage logging, and the preemptive harvesting of declining trees interrupts forest continuity and recovery. Harvesting dying trees compromises the ongoing capacity of the forest to take up nutrients and moisture damaging any surviving plants. No small points, these.

These folks also remind us that left alone the effects of dying hemlocks will remain for decades as important structural elements that support a diversity of organisms. Think of the seeds that remain in the soil for hundreds or thousands of years. The Hemlocks may be dying but if their forests are left to themselves in a relatively short time emerging trees, some will be hardwoods with canopy protection, will help create a very different but healthy woodland. And in today’s disappearing forested landscape that means life, carbon sequestration etc.

Unfortunately change is the only constant and warming temperatures, the logging machine, and the introduction of the Asian woolly adelgid is sucking the life out of these magnificent eastern trees.

Harvard’s ecologists inform us that once infected, a tree will succumb in four to twelve years. Harvard’s hemlock forests are dying, and to honor this passage they have created the Hemlock Hospice project, bringing in international artists to highlight what is happening to these foundational trees by creating sculptures in the hemlock forest.

I think it is so hopeful that an institution like Harvard is honoring the death of hemlocks as real trees whose loss is to be mourned.

If, and this is a big ‘IF’, we can cease industrial logging that uproots not only the trunks of trees (where new life begins immediately in the decaying trunk) and the soil beneath them, there is hope.

Because under those dead hemlocks, seeds that are hundreds or thousands of years old may one day rise to repopulate the planet with this ‘Tree of Life’.

In the meantime, it might be prudent to spend a little time with these majestic denizens of our forests while we still have them.

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